Google “advocate” goes on anti-Apple warpath

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Apple and Google have been duking it out in the smartphone market, on the acquisition front and in proxy legal battles. Now, Google has escalated its information warfare efforts by unleashing a cowboy-hat wearing software developer and tech blogger.

Tim Bray, who recently left his gig at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), announced his new role as a developer advocate at Google with a fiery blog post assailing Apple for its restrictive iPhone policies:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.

“I hate it,” Bray continued, in case that wasn’t already clear.

By contrast, he explained that Google’s Android smartphone software was more in keeping with the open spirit of the Internet.

Bray stressed that the comments were his alone and did not represent Google’s views, of course. But he also noted that Google had reviewed a draft of his post “for coordinating messaging” purposes and did not suggest any changes.

The piece recounted previously-published blog reports of Jobs’ comments during a recent all-hands meeting for Apple employees in which he derided Google’s famous “Don’t be evil” motto and warned that Google was out to kill the iPhone.

It’s been a while since the tech industry has seen a clash of the titans of this scale, and in this case, the gloves have definitely come off.

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I write about Internet companies including Google, Yahoo and Facebook. I’ve covered technology and business for more than ten years at publications including TheStreet.com, CNET and The Industry Standard magazine.